


new romantics ficlets

by ivyrobinson



Series: new romantics [3]
Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M, Gen, glebya friendship, party girl anya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 7,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22419052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: drabbles and ficlets set in the new romantics universe
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: new romantics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1613395
Comments: 25
Kudos: 35





	1. turn around, i'm going to do something illegal

**Author's Note:**

> set about three years before story takes place

“Turn around,” Dmitry warned, pushing his hair out of his face. “I’m going to do something illegal.”

Now if he had said this to Dunya, or even Paulina, they would’ve turned around. They would’ve glared at him first, and maybe even flipped their hair as they did so, but they’d turn around. He would’ve never dared to say it to Marfa. However, he had said this Anya Plisetsky, who just stared at him directly and deliberately did not turn around. 

Instead, she asked, “Are you going to do something useful?”

“No,” he replied, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. It was a constant struggle around her to do so. “I’m just going to take off and run and leave you stranded here as soon as you turn it around.” 

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” she mumbled. 

Dmitry let out an exhausted sigh, “Did you not ask for my help?”

“I wasn’t asking you specifically,” she bit back, “All I asked is if you knew someone who could break me into my apartment. And I thought Vlad was home.” 

Anya got along with his roommate about five times better than she did with him. And Vlad really helped her amp it up whenever Dmitry was around because she thought it annoyed him. (Only in the way that she generally annoyed him.)

“I don’t have to help,” Dmitry pointed out, though they both know he would. If nothing else, because the other girls would murder him if he left their Anyok out to dry. 

She crossed her arms, and did not resist her urge to roll her eyes at him. “What I meant was, are you doing something that’s useful for me to learn?” 

He looked her up and down. The problem with Anya, or at least one of the problems, was that she was deceptively innocent looking. Honey blonde hair, big blue doe eyes, and a lower lip she knew how to tremble at the right moment. Underneath it all, she was a hellion. 

“I don’t want to be responsible for you knowing how to pick locks,” Dmitry decided. 

Anya let out an exasperated breath, and stomped past him, “I am just going to hang out in your apartment until one of the girls gets home.” Then she walked into his apartment, and slammed the door in his face.

Well, he had certainly brought this upon himself.


	2. there went all our hard work. cool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometime pre-fic

“There went all our hard work,” Dmitry said, watching the tent collapse upon itself. “Cool.” 

Anya was unimpressed, “Why would anyone want to go camping?” 

“Why would anyone who agreed to go camping ask that question?” Dmitry countered, before walking away. 

Anya followed. Half the time she couldn’t wait to get rid of him, but now in this exact moment when he needed peace and solitude, she decides to follow him. Well, okay. “Everyone else was going.”

“You could’ve had the apartment to yourself,” Dmitry said to her, picking up the pace, causing her to walk even faster. He should take pity on her, given he had about eight inches on her, so his strides were already longer than hers. “Taken some time for some self care and self reflection.” 

He turned his head just in time to see her make a face at ‘self reflection’. 

“Maybe I have FOMO,” she offered, and then tripped and caught herself on a tree root. 

Vlad had gone off to find a potential fishing spot, and the other three girls had gone to unhelpfully find sticks for firewood and marshmallows. Leaving him alone with Anya to help with the tent. Who then proceeded to accidentally destroy the tent. 

Dmitry came to a stop and turned around to face her, because he didn’t know where the nearest hospital was if she tripped and actually fell on her face trying to keep up with him. “Anya, you are the party. People FOMO over you.” 

“Don’t be sweet,” she said, with fake sweetness herself. “It’s so unbecoming on you.” She looked at him expectedly, as though he had the answer to something. “Where are we going?”

“I’m going back to the ranger station to see if they have any cabins left,” Dmitry told her. “You are…doing something far away from me.” 

She narrowed her eyes and glared at him before turning to storm off. 

Ah, there it was. The peace and quiet he had been seeking in the woods.


	3. should i even ask?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometime after chapter 5

“Should I even ask?”

Dmitry arrived home to find his roommate and Anya on the sofa, heads tilted back and face masks on. Anya’s had a tiger on his, and a puppy face was on the mask of Gleb’s. 

This wasn’t even the weirdest thing he’d walk in on Gleb and Anya doing. He truly had not anticipated that Gleb, straight laced, only watched documentaries and read non fiction, Gleb, would’ve ended up hanging out with Anya- bold, brave, set fire to the world, Anya so much. 

The other day he was almost certain he had caught Anya painting Gleb’s toes but Gleb wore socks the rest of the night so he couldn’t be certain. 

“No,” Anya responded. “The less words you say the better.

Dmitry walked over and pulled back the corner of her face mask, and she swatted him away. “What did you do to Gleb?”

“Enrich his life,” she responded, pulling the mask off now that he had ruined it for him. “He likes spending time with me.”

Gleb, as always, when Dmitry and Anya got started, stayed quiet. Unlike the girls, he wasn’t comfortable throwing himself in the middle of their interactions. 

“I think they call that Stockholm’s syndrome,” Dmitry returned, holding his hand out. 

She took it and he helped her stand up. “I’m going back home.” 

Dmitry helped her with her crutches and with a wave to Gleb, she was off. 

Once the door was closed, Dmitry turned back to his roommate. Who had, at least, removed his face mask. “You can say no to her, you know.”

“Do you even know how,” Gleb returned. Well, that was a different conversation entirely. Then he shrugged, “She’s bored and lonely. It’s harmless.”

“You’re giving her too much power,” Dmitry told him, pulling out ingredients from the pantry for dinner. “Once she’s back on her feet, she’ll find all sorts of ways to drag you around town.”

Gleb stood up, “I think once she’s back on her feet, she’ll find new ways to torment you.”

Dmitry was taken aback, “You’re the one currently stuck in her company, if anyone is being tormented its you- not me.”

“I think she’s tormenting exactly the person she wants to,” Gleb said, rather cryptically. Then he motioned to his face. “I’ll wash this off and come help you.”


	4. first kiss

“Was that mean?” Dunya asks, as it’s her role within their group to worry. 

Marfa is unconcerned, “It’s a dare, Dun. A kiss, no one asked her to jump in front of a moving train.” 

“She doesn’t have to do it,” Paulina backs up Marfa, stealing a glance over at the new girl. “It’s not like her hanging out with us depends on her ability to follow through on a dare.”

Okay, it was probably a little mean to dare the new girl to kiss a boy of her choice. Marfa didn’t exactly expect her to choose Dmitry Sudayev, the boy most girls there would absolutely want to kiss but would be to afraid to actually choose him. 

The mean part will actually come with his rejection, as Dmitry has little patience for their games or the flirtations of the other girls in foster care with them. 

She’s not certain if it’s because he views them all as friends, or finds it uncomfortable with the vulnerable position they’re all in, or because they’re frequently rounded up like this so any failures will be an awkward interaction in the future, or- and most likely- refusing to give them the time of day just helps make him even more irresistible. 

Teenage boys can be exhausting. 

“Does she know that?” Dunya asks. 

It’s probably a valid question, as what Anya does and doesn’t know is a mystery to all of them. Including the girl in question. She had appeared at the end of summer, transferred over from somewhere near Syracuse and sent here to Rochester. Amnesia. It was a new one. 

Marfa shrugs, it doesn’t matter. She had saw the flash of courage and bravado in Anya’s eyes when the dare was issued and she had no doubts that the girl wouldn’t fully see this through. 

Dmitry was going to kill them, but the moment Anya chose him it was hard to not see where this would go. 

The three stop talking to watch as Anya walks up to Dmitry and asks him a question. They should’ve moved closer so they could hear what was going on, but it had all happened so quickly. 

Marfa holds her breath as Dmitry stands up, then Anya is on the tip of her toes, kissing him. And… 

“He’s kissing her back,” Polly whispers in her ear, her hand grasping Marfa’s arm. 

Huh. So he could be interested in one of the girls from the system. 

Then Anya pulls away, running back towards them just as quickly as it had all happened. 

Dmitry looks vaguely dazed by it all, but Marfa is distracted by her companions-including the newest one- collapsing a fit of giggles beside her. She catches Dmitry’s glare before she focuses her attention on Anya. 

She’s nestled between Dunya and Polly, as they laugh and the two begin to pepper her with questions about the kiss. 

“It was fine,” Anya says with a shrug, “Passable even.” 

But Marfa catches her touching her lips in a moment that seems unmatched. 

“We need to get you better clothes,” Marfa declares, standing up. It’s an offer of friendship, of joining their makeshift family. 

Anya takes her hand to be pulled back up to stand. 

“Please do,” Anya says, slipping into the group as if she’s always been there. “I feel like I can fit an entire circus under this dress.”


	5. Birthdays

“I’m not twenty-two,” Anya gasps as she’s going through the box her grandmother has sent over. She’s gone through photo albums (there’s so many- she has a vague memory of her father and his amateur photographer ambitions), through school work (Olga’s prim and neat writing, Alexei’s boxy script and Anastasia’s own illegible scrawl- so much like her own now, it always takes a few moments to recover whenever she sees something where Anya and Anastasia overlap), through cards (she doesn’t open any of them yet, not ready to read any messages her family wrote to her in her younger years) but somehow these official documents have proved to be the most upsetting. 

Dmitry is next to her on his sofa, having allowed her to turn his living room into an archives room for her family. His apartment is the default these days, anyway. Less crowded, more organized. Between Gleb’s military minimalism, and Dmitry’s lack of material possessions, the common living space lacks personality. 

He turns, he has been pretending his attention is focused on the television but she knows it’s really been focused on her this entire time. “Your birthday was in N—” Then it catches up to him. “That’s not actually your birthday.” 

“Nope,” she presses her lips together, wondering why this feels so unexpected. Everything about her identity had been artificial- she knew that. Even before she knew who she had been, she had known that. “I’m still twenty-one until June.” 

Dmitry’s hand comes to rest between her shoulder blades, but she jumps up. “An-“ 

Anya can’t stand to hear any variation of her name right now. “I will be right back.” 

She strides to the door, and he follows her. It’s not unexpected. She goes across the hall, entering. 

Paulina looks up, startled from the schoolwork she was doing at the kitchen table. 

“I’m a Gemini,” she announces to her, Dmitry leans against the counter as Anya comes to a stop in front of her friend. 

Polly considers her for a moment, shutting her laptop. “Yeah, I can see that.” 

“Polly!” She protests, offended. 

“I mean Sagittarius never really fit,” her friend is quick to remind her, not really seeming considered over Anya’s pending tantrum. 

“I was on the cusp!” Anya reminds her. This is why she never wanted to delve into her past. She was very comfortable with the identity she had created for herself over the past six or so years. “Of course it never fully fit.” 

Dmitry’s hands are on her shoulders, and she doesn’t really want to be centered at the moment but she allows him to stay. “What are you guys talking about?”

Anya ignores him, pulling out her phone and pulling up an app. “All this advice has been a lie!” 

Polly snorts, “When have you ever followed advice, Anyok?”

Anya reaches behind her to poke Dmitry in the side before he can say anything, “It’s the principal of the matter, Pol!”

“So change your birthday,” Polly tells her, far too sensibly. “It’ll be okay.” 

“Where’s Dunya?” Anya asks, unsatisfied with Polly’s reaction. 

Marfa wouldn’t understand. Dmitry has no idea what they’re talking about. 

“Work,” Polly says, reaching over to take Anya’s hands. “When you take a breath and think about it, Gemini will make so much more sense to you.” She leans over slightly. “Hey Mitya.”

“Pol,” he returns, letting go of Anya again to lean back against the counter. “How is school going?” 

“Not bad,” Polly returns easily, biting back a smirk. “The beginning of a semester always sucks.” 

She knows they are doing this on purpose just to annoy her. It’s working. She’s predictable. 

Anya goes to storm out but Dmitry catches her easily before she can get too far. He pulls her back against him. 

“We can celebrate your birthday again in June,” he tells her. 

As if she can be easily soothed by shallowness. (Well, sometimes she can.) “How?” 

“We can take a trip,” he says. “Your choice.” 

“Every year?” 

She knows he’s rolling his eyes but he says, “Yes.” 

Anya turns around to kiss him. 

Paulina clears her throat, “I’m studying so please go be gross across the hall.” 

Anya turns her head to stick her tongue out at her while Dmitry pulls her back towards the door. 

“You’re still only going to get one present from me,” Polly calls after her.


	6. viktoria

Anya Sudayev is seven months into motherhood when all her hopes for her daughter are completely dashed. It’s been a good run, she supposes and she still has over seventeen years to develop new hopes for Viktoria, but it still stings. 

Anya rolls onto her back to look over at where Dmitry is across the room. It’s his fault, even though she’s trying really hard not to blame him or hold it against him. 

“Her eyes are definitely brown now,” she tells him as he crosses the room and kneels down on the bed. “She looks nothing like me.” 

Dmitry, who has known for at least two months now that their daughter was definitely going to end up with brown eyes, is quiet about his being right. He leans over and places a kiss on Anya’s lips, and picks their daughter up. Well, his daughter. 

“Guess that just means she’s going to end up with your spirit,” Dmitry tells her, leaning against the headboard. 

Well, that sounds like a nightmare. She’d much rather Vika to inherit golden blonde ringlets, or blue eyes or even her chin than for her to end up with her temper or ability to make everything ten times more difficult than it needs to be. Anya’s never been good at handling karma. 

“Please,” Anya sits up to stroke her thumb across her daughter’s chubby cheeks. Vika grabs a hold of her fingers. “She’s going to end up a health nut who runs five miles every day and only wants to eat vegetables and pine nuts.” 

Dmitry shoots her a tired look, “You do love me, don’t you?” 

“Yes,” she says softly, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “Warts and all.” 

“Back at you,” he teases and kisses her again. Their daughter lets out a coo. “See, she already hates not being the center of attention just like her mother.” 

“You’re just saying that to appease me,” she tells him, but she kisses Vika’s face all around anyway. In return, her daughter tugs on her hair. 

Dmitry wraps his free arm around her, “If we have another one, I’ll try to hold back as much of my DNA as possible.” 

Anya snorts, and takes their daughter back from him, placing her on her lap. She looks like all the best parts of Dmitry, and it fills her heart so much she still isn’t quite certain how to process it. She guesses she’s okay with the fact that it looks like she had nothing to do with the making of this human being. 

“I think she’s perfect,” Anya sighs. 

“Don’t make me blush,” Dmitry tells her and she wrinkles her nose at him. 

But she lets him have it.


	7. Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suggested we go to the beach but everyone is checking you out in your swimsuit and now i’m jealous, but i can’t say anything because we’re not even dating.

Four years before the fic begins 

“I thought you said Anya couldn’t make it,” Dmitry says to Marfa as he sits on the chair next to her. 

He’s not certain if he’s invited the girls to the beach, or if they invited themselves under the guise of visiting him in New York. 

Dmitry knows the likely answer, but his pride won’t allow him to admit it. 

Marfa laughs, applying sunscreen on her legs, “You think I could keep her away from a trip to the beach?” 

“Isn’t she on lockdown?” 

There’s nothing particularly wrong about Anya Plisetsky, just they had a habit of getting on each other’s nerves when they were around each other. 

It’s been a year. He supposes there’s a chance they’ve both grown up. He knows he has. 

“Mitya,” Marfa says, patting him on the knee. “Do you think any punishment actually sticks with Anya?” 

“I seem to remember them being strict with their punishments,” he grumbles. 

“They adore Anyok,” Marfa waves off his concern. “Now that you’re gone she’s the only one that’ll converse in Russian with them.” 

Dmitry rolls his eyes, taking a book out of his bag. He can see Anya in the distance in shorts and a one piece. When he first met her, she was stick thin, her eyes too big for the rest of her body, and wore ill fitting clothes. If nothing else, the past year two years in the group home had given her a healthier look. One that didn’t go unnoticed by the two boys- clearly tourists, chatting her up. 

Marfa looks over to where he’s looking, and shrugs. “Everyone adores Anya.”

“She’s a teen girl in a bathing suit,” Dmitry tells her, opening his book up. “All teen boys love that.” 

Marfa tucks the sunscreen away into her bag, and glances at him out of the corner of her eye, “You’re a teen boy.” 

Barely. He was nineteen. 

“Ah, but I don’t know her as just a girl in a bathing suit,” Dmitry tells her. “I’ve seen the ugliness of her personality underneath.” 

She smacks him with the back of her hand against his shoulder, “She’s one of my best friends.” 

“Are we allowed to hit Dmitry now?” Anya asks, sitting on the edge of his chair. He had lost track of her during his conversation with Marfa and is now living to regret it. 

He catches her hand easily before it can make contact with his arm. “What happened to your fan club?”

Anya tugs her hand out of his. The sun has brought out a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes are more blue than the Atlantic Ocean behind her. 

“They went to get me ice cream,” she says primly. Then to Marfa, “Why were you hitting Dmitry?” 

“You’re really blood thirsty, aren’t you?” Dmitry says, setting his book back down since he’s had nothing but distractions since he attempted to start it.

Anya smiles sweetly at him, “Just for your blood.”

“Whose apartment are you crashing at tonight?” He reminds her and she scrunches her nose at him in response. 

“Play nice, the both of you,” Marfa scolds them. “Dmitry, go have fun. You’re at a beach.”

He maneuvers around Anya to stand up. “I’m going swimming.” Dmitry pulls his shirt over his head, tossing it on his chair. He catches Anya staring at him. “What?” 

She looks away, pulling herself onto his vacant chair to take the spot he just left. Then she shrugs, “Just always surprised by what a mutant you are.” 

“One of you leave,” Marfa begs. “You’re killing my beach buzz.” 

“I’m leaving,” Dmitry promises, before turning to head out to the water where Dunya and Polly are. 

When he gets there he can make out the two guys, frozen treats in hand, talking up Marfa and Anya. He dunks himself under water.


	8. Beach pt 2

Sleeping arrangements aren’t discussed beforehand, and Dmitry finds himself regretting the lack of planning when Dunya and Polly fall asleep on the sofa just after midnight and Anya slips into the apartment shortly after. 

“You guys look like angry parents,” she comments to Dmitry and Marfa as she comes across them in the kitchen. 

Marfa shakes her head, “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.” 

Anya presses a kiss against Marfa’s cheek, “I’ll make sure to do all my chores tomorrow.” 

“I’m not responsible if a minor gets kidnapped on my watch,” Dmitry says to Marfa, who rolls her eyes. 

“A minor?” Anya asks. “Sudayev, you’re barely two years older than us.” 

Dmitry looks to Marfa, who shrugs. Undisturbed that her friend was out in a strange neighborhood with strangers. 

“Go get ready for bed,” Marfa tells Anya. 

“Where are w—-“ Anya begins to ask before realization dawns on her. “I can go wake Dunya up.” 

“Nope,” Marfa says, standing up and directing Anya towards the bathroom. “If you wanted dibs on a place to sleep, you should’ve come back sooner.” 

With a glare at him, though he has nothing to do with this decision, Anya slips into the bathroom. 

“Why am I being punished?” Dmitry asks her. 

“Oh boo boo you have two girls in your bed,” Marfa waves him off. “It’s not going to kill you.” 

Dmitry has his doubts, “How do you know she won’t kill me in my sleep?”

“I’ll protect you,” she promises, patting him on the cheek. “We will all sleep, and tomorrow we will be out of your hair.” 

He has his doubts about that too. But he goes into his bedroom and lays down on the far right of the bed. 

Marfa slides in beside him, ready to act as a buffer. Anya comes into the room and slides into Marfa. 

The two immediately begin whispering to each other. Dmitry takes his pillow out from under his head and puts it over his face. 

Maybe death would be a good fate on this night after all. 

He must fall asleep, because he’s awakened by the sound of fireworks going off. It’s still weeks away from the Fourth of July, but it isn’t stopping some of his neighbors from setting off fireworks every night. Then it’s not the fireworks that he hears but the screaming. 

“What?” He asks before turning his head to see Marfa struggling with Anya. 

He’s seen Anya in various tempers and moods, but he can recognize- can feel- the sheer terror coming off of her at the moment. She’s speaking gibberish, or what he thinks is gibberish before he recognizes a mixture of Russian and English and a little bit of something else in her words. 

Marfa is attempting broken Russian to speak back to her, but vocabulary is limited. 

“She gets night terrors sometimes,” Marfa explains to him before he can ask. “Fireworks make it worse.” 

Dmitry just nods and says the first thing in Russian that comes to him which is some stupid riddle his father would tell him when he was young. 

A little bit of the fog clears away from her eyes, though she is still struggling with her breathing. 

“Okay,” Marfa says, “You keep speaking Russian to her, I’m going to grab her a glass of water.” 

Put on the spot at 3am, Dmitry isn’t quite certain what exactly to say to Anya in English or Russian, so he just starts with some old fairytale that comes to mind. Eventually, she sits up, drawing her knees up close to her chest and resting her forehead against them. 

He reaches out and tentatively touches her back, moving his hand in slow circular motions. She doesn’t flinch or fight it, and he can feel her breathing slow beneath his hand so he continues to do it. 

“Where’s Marf?” She asks, back in English, her voice muffled by her knees. 

“She went to get water,” he tells her, “Does that help?” 

“No,” Anya answers, “But it helps her feel helpful.” 

He wants to ask if she’s okay, but she’s clearly not and he doesn’t want to upset her by asking. Another firework goes off and her whole body flinches, but that’s all. 

“Your hair has gotten really long,” he comments, unsure what else there is to say at such a moment. 

“I haven’t cut it since I was in the hospital,” she explains, referring to two years ago when she woke up with amnesia and nothing to identify her and ended up in the group home where they all had more or less met. 

It had been a little longer than chin length when he had met her. 

“I brought you water,” Marfa says, slipping back into the room. 

Anya lifts her head up to take the glass and takes a healthy sip from it before handing it back to Marfa. “Thanks.” 

Marfa sets it on the night table beside the bed, before sitting next to Anya on the bed. 

“What do you want to do?” She asks her. 

“Go back to sleep,” Anya tells her, sounding exhausted. 

Then she surprises him, by turning, curling up against his side. Her face tucked against his shoulder. Dmitry shifts her hand so it stays against her lower back. She seems to slip back into sleep easily for someone who had come out of it so violently. 

Marfa takes a gulp of the water she had brought for Anya before crawling back in bed.


	9. Fourth of July

It used to be they went away for the Fourth of July, buried deep in the woods or just somewhere there wouldn’t be as much noise. Then Dominika was born on the 5th of July, and Viktoria spent the week with her aunt Dunya and saw them all for herself and fell in love with them. The next year when they went away, she begged and begged to be able to see them and finally Dmitry had relented, driving her closer to town to watch them. And the year after. 

This year she begged and begged her mother to come along with them. Dominika joined in, wanting to be wherever her older sister was. 

Anya had relented, because she couldn’t deny her daughters anything individually, but especially when they teamed up together. 

She had sat on the hood of the car, white faced, while Vika had clutched her arm and talked continuously. Dominika sat on top of his shoulders, clutching his head and obstructing his view with every loud noise. 

Now it is nearly midnight, and he turns to the sound of Anya first yelling and then crying in her sleep. 

He reaches over, stroking her hair, as Trixie climbs up her legs to begin her duties. 

“I’m fine,” she mumbles. 

“It’s okay if you’re not,” he tells her, and she scrunches her nose at him in return. 

“I know it’s just fireworks,” Anya says, reaching down to stroke the cat’s fur. “I kind of thought actually seeing them would help.” 

A bullet grazed her skull when she was fifteen years old and she witnessed the slaughter of some, if not all, her family members where gunfire occurred. It’s not an experience that is easy to rationalize in your head. 

There’s a knock on the door before it swings open. Well, their eldest has half listened to their request. 

“I heard a noise,” Viktoria announces. 

“Just a bad dream,” Dmitry tells her softly, “It’s okay to go back to bed.” 

Viktoria shakes her head, “I wanna see Mama.” 

Anya wipes at her eyes, “It’s fine. Come here, kiska.” 

She jumps on the bed, ambling over rather ungracefully. She nestled her way in between him and Anya. Ah, that’s the way she wanted to do it. 

“Are you sad?” She asks, as Dmitry presses a kiss against her cheek, and moves to make room for her. 

Anya’s quiet for a moment, concentrating hard on petting Trixie before answering, “Yeah, I think I am.” 

Vika nods sagely, “Is it because Mika is turning three?” 

She lets out a soft laugh, “Maybe a little.” 

She reaches out to scratch Trixie’s head and the cat throws Dmitry an annoyed look. As if he is at fault for the interruption. 

“Why is Trix on you?” 

“It’s what she does,” Anya answers, moving her arm around to wrap her arm under Viktoria’s shoulder. “When I have a bad dream, she comes to comfort me.” 

“I want a cat like that,” she declares, turning her head to look at Dmitry. It’s far too late to be talked into taking in a cat. “I have bad dreams too, sometimes.” Her hands drop from Trixie. “You and Papa read to me.” 

“What do you have bad dreams about?” Anya asks, a little more present then she had been earlier in the night. 

Viktoria thrusts her arm up in the air, “I got bit by a dog.” 

“That is scary,” Anya agrees with a wobbly smile. 

“But dogs are nice in real life,” she recovers, bringing her arm back down. 

She wriggles in her mother’s grasp, turning so she’s facing Dmitry now. 

“What are your bad dreams about, Papa?” she asks, and he’s glad she didn’t bring the topic up to Anya. 

“That I am kept from sleep by a six year old girl,” he tells her, tapping her on the nose. 

She giggles, and protests, “Papa!” 

“Oh sorry,” he says as the baby monitor comes to life. “Papa, I have to go!”

The real nightmare. 

“Why does she think that’s a walkie talkie?” Dmitry asks. 

Anya shrugs, shaking her head. “I think she just realizes when she talks into it, you answer.” 

Dmitry slides out of the bed, trying not to disturb her and Viktoria as he does. The door across the hall is open and the room is empty so he walks down the hall to the bathroom where a toddler awaits him. 

“You know the point of this is so you go by yourself,” he comments, ruffling her red curls. 

“I have to go,” she repeats before running over to the training toilet to use it. 

For some reason Dominika is fairly adept at potty training but has not grasped the fact she does not need an audience for it. 

“That was a really good job,” Dmitry tells her, once she’s done and pulls her diaper back up. “What do we do now, Mika?” 

She raises both her hands in the air, “Wash ‘em!”

She climbs up the step stool and turns on the faucet as she soaps up. She uses far too much soap, but he supposes that’s better than the alternative. 

Dominka turns and extends her arms up, asking to be picked up. Dmitry reaches behind her to turn off the faucet before lifting her up. She wipes her hands on his shirt. 

He places a kiss against her cheek, “Happy Birthday, baby.” 

He has no idea what time it actually is, but it feels like it has to be after midnight. 

“Happy birthday,” she returns to him. 

Dmitry is too tired to correct her. 

He considers dropping her off back in the room her and Vika were sharing out here but knows it won’t last. He turns, bringing her into his and Anya’s room. 

“I’ve brought you another child,” Dmitry announces. Mika clings to his neck as he crawls back to bed. 

“Good,” Anya says, reaching past a now sleeping Viktoria to press a hand against Dominika’s cheek. “This one fell asleep on me.” 

Trixie has moved to sleep on the other side of Anya. 

“Be careful what you wish for,” Dmitry warns her, eyeing just how awake the toddler seems. 

Mika throws her arms around her sister, “My Vitusha.” 

“Shh,” Anya tells her. “Your sister is sleeping.”

“I’m not,” she points out. Not wrong. 

“But you could be,” Dmitry whispers to her. 

“If you sleep now,” Anya tells her, “the sooner you’ll be able to get to your birthday breakfast.”

Dominika scrunches her face up, her eyes closed trying too hard to be asleep to actually sleep. 

Anya reaches over to thread her fingers with his. “You’re very far away now.” 

“The true obstacle in our plan in creating our own army,” he tells her, as their youngest let’s out a yawn. “I definitely can’t be more than three, four children away from you.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him. “Oh I was ready to return one of these ones.” 

“Liar,” he teases. “You okay to sleep?” 

“Yeah,” Anya says softly. “Got my therapy cat, my therapy daughters and my therapy husband, what more do I need to sleep?” She squeezes his hand. “Don’t actually answer that.” 

Dmitry allows himself to start to drift off to sleep. He feels like he’s just fallen asleep, though he has no idea how much time has passed, when he feels his shirt being bunched up and tugged on by a toddler. 

“Papa, I have to go!” 

It’d be counterproductive to encourage her to just go in her diaper, he reminds himself as he pulls himself out of bed, picking up Mika with him, careful not to disturb Anya and Viktoria, who are now both asleep.


	10. Running post fic

Dmitry would say he wakes up with dawn, but more like Galina wakes up at dawn and Dmitry wakes up with her. If nothing else, he appreciates that she keeps a routine. Anya mumbles into the pillow as he pats her shoulder blades, as he gets up. He gets this time because it’s so close to the time he gets up for a run, it seems unnecessary to make her wake up to tend to Galina as well. 

“You’re the loudest one yet,” he whispers to her, walking her across the living room. “Good thing we are stopping with you or else we might have broken windows with the next one.” 

She mouths on his T-shirt in response. She’s calming and becoming more content as the memory of her wet diaper fades. 

Her baby blue eyes are darkening already, and it seems to be the end of the Romanov blues. He places a kiss on a tuft of her light hair. 

“You’ve been fed, changed,” Dmitry is telling her. “And now you’re getting attention. Is there anything else you require?”

“Was that Lika?” Viktoria asks, appearing behind him and rubbing her eyes. 

Both her and Dominika are insistent on calling their littlest sister Lika even though that’s neither diminutive nor nickname for Galina. They wanted her to fit in with Vika and Mika. 

“The noise?” Dmitry asks her, shifting the baby so he can ruffle his oldest’s hair. “Yes.” 

Vika wrinkles her nose in response, “Why is she so loud?” 

“She wants to make sure we are paying attention,” Dmitry says, as Vika stands on the tip of her toes to get a peak at her sister. 

“Was I this loud?” She wonders. 

“Sometimes,” he tells her. Though overall she was an eerily quiet baby compared to the other two. 

Dmitry sets Galina down in the bassinet in his and Anya’s room, motioning for Vika to stay in the hallway. She lets out a startled cry at being set down but falls back asleep almost instantly. 

Well, there’s that. 

Viktoria is still waiting for him in the hall, in her pajamas and messy braid. 

“What’re you doin Papa?” She asks as he shuts the door behind him softly. 

“Going for a run,” he answers as he walks back into the living room. “Did you want to go back to sleep?” 

Vika seems to consider this seriously, then asks, “Can I come with you?” 

The last time anyone showed interest in going for a run with Dmitry was years ago back when he was roommates with Gleb. 

“Sure,” he agrees, “Go put on sneakers.”

He writes out a note for Anya to explain the missing daughter. Not that he expects them to put past when Anya wakes up, but just in case. 

Viktoria comes back with untied shoes, that he makes her tie up before they go out into the spring air. 

She lasts longer than he expects her to, and treats her out to breakfast when it’s over. Then he carries her home and deposits her into a bed with her mother and Mika.


	11. teen beach au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a more of a what if dimya hooked up as teenagers rather than waiting until they’re in their twenties an au of an au if you will

“There’s a rule against sitting on the counter,” Dmitry says as he enters his apartment. It’s been a day and a half and the four girls have completely infiltrated his and Vlad’s apartment. 

Vlad found it charming. Dmitry enjoyed seeing his old friends, even if they came attached with Anya. 

Who is currently sitting on his counter, eating out of a bag of Vlad’s chips. 

“When did you so lame?” She asks him. “You’ve always been lame I guess, but you were fun to others. Now you’re just a nag.”

“You’re getting sand all over the kitchen counter,” Dmitry points out. “It’s unsanitary.”

Anya pushes a potato chip in his mouth, “Relax.” 

He closes his eyes and chews the chip before responding. “Why? Anya, why?” 

“You’re so nice and relaxed around others,” she complains. “And so uptight around me.”

“I’m not uptight,” he says though he does sound annoyingly uptight when he says it. “You just deliberately antagonize me.”

“Me?” She presses a hand against her chest. 

“You’re cute,” he says and taps her on the nose. 

Anya reaches up, catching his hand. “Was that Dmitry Sudayev paying me a compliment?” 

He’d rather set himself on fire first. “No, I’m making fun of you.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and he hates how easy it seems for her. Not easy maybe in the grand scope of things, just easy in their particular circumstances of growing up. 

She lets go of things easily, excluding a grudge on him, and takes everything lightly. 

“You don’t need any compliments on your looks, anyway,” Dmitry points out. 

Anya shrugs, breaking a potato chip into pieces to eat. “Neither do you.” 

He pokes her on the knee, “That sounds suspiciously close to a compliment.” 

“It’s not,” she smiles brightly at him. “It’s just that our standards for men are so low.”

He glances over at her, and she tilts her head. It’s probably not a good idea to leave them alone for too long. The potential for disaster is too high. 

“Are you planning on eating real food tonight or just your weight in potato chips?”

Anya seems to seriously consider this, “Do you think I could afford over 100 pounds in potato chips?” 

“I’m trying to ask if you want dinner.” 

She closes up the potato chip bag and reaches over to wipe the grease off her fingers with his shirt. “Then ask me in a normal way, Weirdo.” 

“Anya Plisetsky,” he says. “Did you want dinner?” 

Anya hooks her fingers she had just been wiping off into his shirt, every look she’s ever given him seems to be a dare. Which is only the reason why he thinks he breaks and takes on the dare, her mouth yielding under his the moment he kisses her. 

It’s not the rushed, unexpected kiss from just a few years before. Their lips brushing as strangers. This is years of clashing and tension built up and unwinding between them. 

It’s a terrible idea, he’s sure. There are no good ideas when it comes to Anya, he’s convinced himself. But their movements are in agreement, and their tongues are not sharp at the moment. 

And if they stop, they’ll have a whole mess to address of things they’ve managed to avoid whenever they’ve been in the same space together. 

Her hand reaches for his belt, and he decides to stop thinking all together.


	12. preverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tumblr prompt: “What? I do not like him/her/them! We’re just friends.”

“What?” Anya jerks back so fast, she’s pretty sure Polly is going to have to fix the eyeliner she was just doing on her. “I don’t like him!” She thought this was very well known by now. The sky is blue, water is wet and Anya does not like Dmitry Sudayev. “We are just friends.” She shakes her head vehemently and Polly reaches over to still her by clasping her chain. “Not even friends, just neighbors.”

“You know what Shakespeare would say?” Polly asks her, the tip of the eyeliner pencil dangerously close to her pupil. 

“Nothing,” Anya ignores what the actual answer is. “He would just make me run into a sword.” 

“All I said—“ Polly begins, and Anya impatiently takes the pencil out of her hand to fix it herself. 

“You didn’t say anything,” Anya huffs, “Your implication was clear.” 

It’s not worth getting upset over, and she knows it’s not worth getting upset over. And the more upset she gets over it, the more her friends will tease her. It’s how Anya and Dmitry’s relationship- for lack of a better word, began. With a dare and a kiss, and years of animosity. 

No, she definitely didn’t feel anything for him. 

Polly laughs, and hands her a lipstick to put on. “You’re adorable when you’re flustered.” 

“I think you mean annoyed,” Anya calls back, but Polly’s already left the room. 

Anya applies the lipstick to her lips and doesn’t think of standing on her tiptoes under a tree when she had no memories except the ones she had been creating at that very moment and brushed her lips against his.


End file.
